Edward Snowden revelations prompt … UN investigation into surveillance … UN's senior counter-terrorism official says revelations 'are at the very apex of public interest concerns' … The UN's senior counter-terrorism official is to launch an investigation into the surveillance powers of American and British intelligence agencies following Edward Snowden's revelations that they are using secret programmes to store and analyse billions of emails, phone calls and text messages. The UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson QC … Snowden had disclosed "issues at the very apex of public interest concerns". He said the media had a duty and right to publish stories about the activities of GCHQ, and its American counterpart the National Security Agency. "The astonishing suggestion that this sort of responsible journalism can somehow be equated with aiding and abetting terrorism needs to be scotched decisively," said Emmerson… – Guardian

Dominant Social Theme: We are really fired up about the UN now. We used to think it was an impossibly corrupt and authoritarian organization intended to parlay global mischief into world government. But now as it raises its glorious banner of justice and confronts the tyranny of terrorism, we've changed our aching minds!

Free-Market Analysis: This is almost enough to make one forgive the UN. Or maybe not.

Maybe this is the reaction that top men at the UN want. They want us to shout from the rooftops, finally – finally! – someone is standing up for civil rights. Someone realizes that Western spook shops are out of control. Someone is wiling to take up the cudgel for the little guy who is daily spied upon and abused by a long alphabet of Western agencies.

We wish we could, in fact, believe in the sentiments that we've stated above. But we can't. For one thing, we don't think that Edward Snowden is the heroic agent that everyone has made him out to be. Or perhaps he is heroic but nonetheless is being manipulated.

We know he is being manipulated just the way Julian Assange is being manipulated – willingly or not – because these people get tremendous coverage in the mainstream media.

What exactly is it that Snowden has revealed? That the US – and the West's spook agencies generally – spy? That the spying is aggressive and wholesale? Okay … We've been pointing out the same sorts of things for years, but we're not considered fit fodder for Time magazine's "Person of the Year."

You know, we don't even want to be on the cover of Time. We used to think it would be swell, but that was when we still had our youth. We've actually broken a lot of stories here at the Bell.

For a decade we've explained the reality of central banking and the validity of human action. We've been right. Correct. Whatever. But nary a single nomination for a Pulitzer Prize. Not one journalism award. Not even the breath of a mention.

But Assange? Snowden? They're the subjects of movies and books. Their travels are traced and their utterances are celebrated.

We don't want to sound envious. We're not. The enormity of the globalist tidal wave has taken away our breath and quelled any sense of rivalry. We simply want the things we see to be exposed.

Now so does the UN. Here's more from the article, with the UN mention toward the bottom:

"It is the role of a free press to hold governments to account, and yet there have even been outrageous suggestions from some Conservative MPs that the Guardian should face a criminal investigation. It has been disheartening to see some tabloids giving prominence to this nonsense."

Emmerson's intervention comes ahead of Tuesday's hearing of the home affairs select committee, which is conducting its own inquiry into counter-terrorism. The Guardian's editor in chief, Alan Rusbridger, will give evidence to MPs on the committee on Tuesday afternoon, followed by the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, and assistant commissioner Cressida Dick.

… Last month, the heads of Britain's three intelligence agencies, MI5, GCHQ and MI6, gave evidence before parliament's intelligence and security committee. During a 90-minute hearing, they accused Snowden of leaking material that had been "a gift to terrorists".

But Emmerson said such claims "need to be subjected to penetrating scrutiny". He said his inquiry will be requiring further testimony from GCHQ's director, Sir Iain Lobban, the director of MI5, Andrew Parker, and MI6 chief Sir John Sawers.

"I will be seeking a far more detailed explanation than security chiefs gave the (ISC) committee. They must justify some of the claims they have made in public, because as matters stand, I have seen nothing in the Guardian articles which could be a risk to national security. In this instance, the balance of public interest is clear."

He added: "When it comes to assessing the balance that must be struck between maintaining secrecy and exposing information in the public interest there are often borderline cases. This isn't one of them. The Guardian's revelations are precisely the sort of information that a free press is supposed to reveal."

"In Europe, the political class is incandescent. Many states have registered serious objections at the UN, and there are diplomatic moves towards an international agreement to restrict surveillance activity." Chaired by Keith Vaz, the home affairs select committee called for the Guardian to give evidence following the ISC hearing.

We would like to think of the UN as a shining beacon of hope, but it is the home of the authoritarian Agenda 21 that seeks to strip average citizens around the world of property rights.

And then there is this from a March 2013 article on the UN in the National Review, summing up some recent corruption:

The U.N. rejected claims for compensation over the outbreak of cholera it caused in Haiti. U.N. officials tried to cover up their responsibility for the situation, which has killed over 8,000 Haitians and sickened hundreds of thousands more. Subsequent scientific analysis confirmed that the cholera strain originated in southern Asia and was likely introduced by U.N. peacekeepers.

The U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services issued a report in January revealing that the U.N. vastly overspent on its travel budget in 2010 and 2011. As U.S. ambassador Joseph Torsella observed, "The 2010–11 budget included $72.5 million for travel. … [Yet] the U.N. spent a total of $575 million in travel-related expenses in the 2010-–11 biennium." Torsella attributes much of the overrun to unjustified upgrades to business- and first-class airline travel and "direct payments to travelers of, on average, nearly twice the actual cost of travel."

One could make the case that the UN is wickedly corrupt and meant to be so. It is an agent of global domination, an international government in waiting. In taking up the cudgels for Snowden, UN officials no doubt hope that Snowden's glory, such as it is, rubs off on them.

This is simply the way it is when it comes to false flags. And in the era of the Internet, we are seeing more and more such.

We hear that Snowden's mistreatment and the issues he has raised are the "apex of public concern." But the real apex of public concern, from our point of view, ought to be the emergent global fascism.

The UN is the child of an unholy marriage between multinationals, central banks, government agencies, NGOs and quasi-private military power. The idea that somehow officials inside or outside of the UN are in any way capable of investing the current surveillance scandals is dubious in the extreme. It is a bit like the Roman Senate taking up cudgels to investigate the Emperor's Praetorian guard.

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing …